Earlier this year, an Association of National Advertisers report set the digital marketing industry abuzz with a finding that billions of dollars are wasted in programmatic ad buying.
Globally, advertisers spend about $88 billion per year on programmatic ad buys. The ANA study found that of the total, about $13 billion — and possibly as much as $20 billion — is wasted on poor ad placements, including “made for advertising” websites (MFAs).
Those kinds of numbers got plenty of media coverage (Media Post, AdAge, The Wall Street Journal). And those findings understandably raised big concerns with advertisers.
At Brunner, the ANA’s report prompted us to revisit our practices and double down on our strict processes to ensure every dollar of each client’s media budget is getting the best possible return.
By finding ways to actively combat waste and fraud in the platforms we manage for our clients, we can get the great benefits of programmatic buying — increased transparency, control, flexibility, and scalability — while managing those spends safely and responsibly.
Here’s how we do it.
Build Strong Partnerships with Responsible Marketers
To be sure, there is a varying level of waste any time advertisers buy ads programmatically, or even directly. The level of risk can be different depending on your industry and go-to-market strategy.
For the Brunner team, building strong relationships is key on both the selling and buying sides of programmatic advertising.
On the selling side, the Brunner team has quarterly meetings with major publishers such as Disney, NBCU, and Viacom (CBS/Paramount). Those conversations give us a clear understanding of the inventory being directed to each programmatic demand-side-platform, known as a DSP, that we use.
On the programmatic buying side, we have bi-weekly discussions with our partner DSPs, such as Roku, on key topics including impression quality.
Our on-going dialog with various partners has led to effective tactics including:
- Leveraging proprietary Advertising Watermark 2.0, which integrates with Roku operating systems to verify ad requests and impressions, so our clients know they are reaching genuine Roku users. That’s important because Roku Channel users are often unique real users — 42% of them don’t use Hulu and 38% don’t use YouTube.
- Avoiding open exchange inventory in favor of custom curated private marketplaces, called PMPs, from various partners like Disney/DirecTV Stream across a variety of media channels (ex. display/CTV/audio). This ensures our clients’ ads are being served where intended, with minimal waste. In certain situations, we will even use our SEO tools to create very specific inclusion lists to avoid the hundreds of thousands of MFA websites that litter programmatic inventory reports.
- Implementing in-ad JavaScript tags and click fraud detection code to monitor websites and apps actively. That lets us exclude those that do not serve our clients’ ads to human users and filter out inventory with high bot traffic on a daily basis.
Ensure Access to Performance Data
The ANA report highlights that advertisers often don’t demand specific data rights in their buying contracts. That’s not the case for Brunner clients. We scrutinize every contract to ensure we get the data we need to measure results and evaluate how well a programmatic buy is working.
Reviewing performance allows us to adjust, adapt, and maximize the impact of our clients’ ad budgets, so we’re delivering the best value for every dollar spent.
Follow Strict Processes to Combat Waste and Fraud
With those strong relationships in place, we leverage our team’s expertise and Brunner’s technology resources to pre-screen potential inventory. We work proactively to eliminate fraudulent sources. We do the following as ongoing practices and processes:
- Scrutinize and manage inventory from each supply-side platform (SSP).
- Conduct weekly app reviews to block poor-quality, likely fraudulent, and brand-unsafe apps worldwide.
- Review of top spending domains monthly to refine our domain and seller exclusion lists.
- Work closely with publishers to ensure inventory is accessed through preferred suppliers.
- Update our sophisticated invalid traffic filter (SIVT) continuously in real-time as new bots emerge.
- Analyze post-impression activity to update user/IP exclusion lists based on click-through rates (CTR).
- Update our seller/publisher-level exclusion lists continuously based on the incidence of both bot/SIVT and site fraud.
- Use malware scanning to ensure creatives meet industry quality standards.
Ready to Chat about Combatting Waste in Programmatic Buying?
Programmatic ad buying offers significant benefits and efficiencies. We take our responsibility to combat waste and fraud very seriously, and make sure our campaigns drive business impact for each Brunner client. If you’re interested in discussing programmatic buying and our approach to safe and responsible programmatic campaigns, please get in touch. We’re happy to chat.
Ivan Tafur is the director of integrated planning at Brunner. He has 20+ years of industry experience across a variety of categories including retail, auto, education, legal, home improvement, and nonprofit. For each client, Ivan brings a unique approach to data and research to create customized strategies that drive long-term brand awareness and near-term sales. His background spans traditional media as well as digital and mobile emerging technologies, where he looks to generate the greatest impact and efficiency. See Ivan’s LinkedIn profile
Dan Kuzio is a senior programmatic manager at Brunner. He is responsible for executing, managing, and optimizing online media campaigns and programs for agency clients. Dan’s expertise in programmatic advertising ensures that his clients achieve their marketing goals efficiently, while always staying at the forefront of industry trends. Prior to joining Brunner, he worked at Merkle as an associate director of performance media. In that role, he oversaw specialists in their day-to-day tasks of media campaigns and maintained direct management of high-profile accounts.